- Job title
- Founding Design Engineer
- Job location
- New York, NY, US / Philadelphia, PA, US
- Job description
- **About Aqua**
_Aqua is the operating system for wealth channel alternatives. We are building the platform for independent broker-dealers (IBDs) and independent financial advisors (RIAs) to invest in alternative assets. We are on track to process $5B in new transactions for 2025, with customer logos including some of the largest RIAs/BDs in the nation and asset managers including Blackstone, Apollo, JLL, Blue Owl, etc._
**About the Role**
We're hiring our **founding design engineer** to own design across product, brand, and marketing. This is a rare opportunity to define the visual and experiential foundation of a fast-growing fintech company from the ground up.
You'll tackle a unique design challenge: making complex alternative investment workflows feel simple and trustworthy for financial advisors managing billions in client assets. Our users expect institutional-grade sophistication wrapped in consumer-grade simplicity. You'll work directly with leadership, product, and engineering to ship both the product interfaces that power transactions and the brand assets that drive sales.
**What You’ll Do**
* **Own product design and implementation** — Drive the complete design process from concept to production code, translating complex investment workflows into intuitive interfaces built with React, TypeScript, and Tailwind
* **Shape Aqua's visual identity** — Establish our brand guidelines and design system, creating a cohesive visual language that signals trust, sophistication, and ease of use
* **Create high-impact brand and marketing assets** — Design sales decks, one-pagers, conference materials, and digital content that close deals and maintain consistency across all touchpoints
* **Be the voice of design** — Champion design thinking across the organization while establishing the foundations (processes, tools, culture) for the future design team
* **Partner with leadership** — Work directly with founders and executives to scale the design function as the company grows
**Who You Are**
* **3-5+ years designing and building** in startups, with experience as a product designer, design engineer, or frontend engineer with strong design sensibility
* **Fluent in both design and code** — You're as comfortable in Figma as you are writing React components and can move seamlessly between designing interfaces and implementing them
* Your portfolio shows end-to-end work: polished product interfaces you've coded and brand assets you've designed
* **Comfortable with ambiguity** — You thrive in early-stage environments, know when to prioritize speed vs. polish, and don't need detailed specs to produce great work
* **Strong communicator** — You can articulate design decisions to both technical and business stakeholders and build consensus across teams
* **Excited about ownership** — You want to be the founding design engineer, setting the standard for everything from iconography to interaction patterns to brand voice
* Proficiency in modern design tools (Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and frontend technologies (React, TypeScript, Tailwind/CSS)
* Experience in fintech, wealth management, or B2B SaaS is a plus but not required
